• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 02 / 12 / 2011

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Postmedia News. Olá! Nominated B.C. musician Alex Cuba heads to the Grammys. By Adrian Chamberlain, Postmedia News February 11, 2011 12:14 PM Photograph by: Adrian Lam, Postmedia News. Not long ago, Alex Cuba and his band were walking along historic Canal Street, the famous thoroughfare bordering the French Quarter in New Orleans.

Cuba's cellphone rang. He recognized the number. It was his wife, Sarah, calling from their home in Smithers, B.C.It was midnight. He frowned. Given the lateness of the hour, such a call was worrying. "Then she says, 'Allie' — she calls me Allie — 'You are nominated for the Grammys!'" Cuba said, laughing uproariously.

It was true. Alex Cuba (born Alexis Puentes) was nominated in the category of best Latin pop album. He yelled out his amazement. One of his bandmates dashed into a store and bought him a Corona, which he chugged — joyously — right there on Canal Street.

"I was drinking a beer," he said. "It was super-funny."

That was Dec. 5, 2010. On Sunday, Cuba and his entourage attend the Grammy ceremonies at Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

For this 36-year-old native Cuban and immigrant to B.C. , it's a dream come true.

His nominated album, Alex Cuba, was recorded in a Victoria studio run by his friend, producer Joby Baker. The independent label on which it was released, Caracol Records, is really just Cuba; it represents no other artist.

He comes to the Grammys as a left-field nominee, an absolute outsider. The other artists up for best Latin pop album — Ricardo Arjona, Kany Garcia, Alejandro Sanz and Julieta Venegas — are on the Warner and Sony labels, giants in the record business.

In November, Alex Cuba won a Latin Grammy Award for best new artist. That award, issued by the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in Las Vegas, is a significant honour. But in the American music scene, the so-called "regular" Grammys — culminating with Sunday's ceremony — are the pinnacle.

This week I met up with Cuba at Baker's Tillicum studio, where the pair is collaborating on a new Cuba album. The studio is in a backyard hut, separate from a modest '70s-style house. Cuba wore a military-style jacket, a scarf and bright orange Nikes. He sported a Jim Hendrix-style Afro — a spectacular puffball of curls.

As I arrived, Baker, sitting at the recording console, was tweaking Cuba's drum sound.

"Can I hear the kick drum?" the producer said to the musician, who was sitting at a kit. "Hit it really hard."

During a break, Cuba confessed his astonishment at being nominated for a Grammy. He thought, to be nominated, one needed to be a famous artist with a famous producer on a famous label.

He smiled when asked what career doors winning a Grammy might open.

"If I win a Grammy, we are going to celebrate. That's as far as I can go with you today. We are going to have a good time in Los Angeles."

Baker is an admired producer within Victoria's tight-knit music scene. He's a transplanted Englishman who has overseen recordings for the Cowboy Junkies and Mae Moore. He and Cuba share an instinctive relationship that's as much about friendship as musical chemistry.

"Sometimes, you're thinking the same things at the same time," Baker said. "I'll be thinking about Alexis and I'll call him. And he's way the hell on the other side of the world, and he's thinking of me."

The sound Baker helped coax from his friend on the album Alex Cuba (on which Baker also played) is attractively punchy, crisp and spare. All but one of the songs are sung in Spanish. While there are Latin elements in the music, it sounds as much North American as anything else. The singer/bassist/guitarist delves into funk, pop, rock, jazz.

Cuba acknowledges his music has floated away from the traditional Cuban son style. He says the things that are distinctively Cuban are the way he pronounces Spanish words and the poetic style of the lyrics. Among his images are horses, the night sky and the red earth.

But chiefly, Cuba sings about love.

He moved to Canada after meeting his future wife on a tour of Canada in 1995. His twin brother, musician Adonis Puentes, soon followed. The pair had grown up in the city of Artemisa, playing son. The style is Cuba's musical DNA, distinctive for its pulsating, circular rhythms. Their father, Valentin, was a respected musician who taught at Artemisa's cultural centre.

Cuba's wife is from a pioneering family in Smithers, where the couple moved after living in Victoria. There they raise their three children. One, 14-year-old Daniel, sports an Afro just like his dad's.

"When I'm with him at home, nobody looks at me. That's how good it is," Cuba says, laughing. Yet Cuba's musical goals are serious — even lofty.

"I've been feeling, over the years, that I'm on a mission. And that mission is to bring more respect to Latin music, to show you can go beyond language if your music's good. And now it's happening. The dream is here."

Cuba, whose trophy shelf also holds Juno awards, appreciates such honours. But he says they're the byproduct of a process, rather than the goal.

"I want to change the sound of Latin music," he says, "and I think with this man (Baker) over here, we can do it."

Source: www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Nominated+musician+Alex+Cuba+heads+Gr...